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Wednesday, June 22, 2011

Walking through the entrance to Wave Hill, a giant garden on a cliff overlooking the Hudson with flowers that actually smelled like someone lit incense, and the sounds of more than twenty Griots playing their sweet, hypnotic music, it was hard for me to really convince myself I was in the Bronx. But there we were, at what a flyer announced as an “historic gathering of NYC’s Griot community,” up on 252nd street.

This summit of some of the best known and most beloved New York based musicians from Burkina Faso, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Ivory Coast, Mali, Senegal, and Sierra Leone was put together as part of the Make Music New York initiative and it gathered a smiling crowd up on Wave Hill. People danced and clapped along, sometimes at the behest of a stray Griot who found himself grooving through the audience. At one point, a little girl of no more than 3 walked up to each of the six singers, nudged forward by her dad, and handed them each a dollar bill as part of the ancient tradition of rewarding Griot for their musical blessings.

Though the Afropop team has definitely found itself in more distant lands than 252nd street, the adventure nonetheless provided some truly inspiring West African music in a picture perfect setting. Is there a better way to spend the first day of summer?

Walking through the entrance to Wave Hill, a giant garden on a cliff overlooking the Hudson with flowers that actually smelled like someone lit incense, and the sounds of more than twenty Griots playing their sweet, hypnotic music, it was hard for me to really convince myself I was in the Bronx. But there we were, at what a flyer announced as an “historic gathering of NYC’s Griot community,” up on 252nd street.

This summit of some of the best known and most beloved New York based musicians from Burkina Faso, Gambia, Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Ivory Coast, Mali, Senegal, and Sierra Leone was put together as part of the Make Music New York initiative and it gathered a smiling crowd up on Wave Hill. People danced and clapped along, sometimes at the behest of a stray Griot who found himself grooving through the audience. At one point, a little girl of no more than 3 walked up to each of the six singers, nudged forward by her dad, and handed them each a dollar bill as part of the ancient tradition of rewarding Griot for their musical blessings.

Though the Afropop team has definitely found itself in more distant lands than 252nd street, the adventure nonetheless provided some truly inspiring West African music in a picture perfect setting. Is there a better way to spend the first day of summer?

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Afropop Worldwide is an internationally syndicated weekly radio series, online guide to African and world music, and an international music archive, that has introduced American listeners to the music cultures of Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean since 1988.

The Afropop.org website features on-demand streams from the program catalog, features, interviews, CD reviews, and original Afropop videos.

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